words from the museum

Behind the Scenes in Conservation: What Happened Here?

In conservation, sometimes we have to form theories about what might have caused the damage to an artwork to better decide how it should be corrected. What happened here? This collar interior in a Geoffey Beene silk chiffon dress dates…

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Here are Eleonora of Toledo and her son, Don Francesco de’ Medici watching while their frame is being prepared to receive them. The oil-on-wood painting by Agnolo Bronzino, dated to around 1550, has undergone a complete conservation treatment, including varnish…

The Russian workshops of Peter Carl Fabergé (1846–1920) are most readily identified with the imaginative and exquisitely-crafted Easter eggs that they produced for the Tsar’s family. But, they also produced many other delicate and bejeweled novelties, such as boxes, cigarette…

School is out for the year, but when this American sampler was made in about 1815, many young girls didn’t go to school at all. Instead, young women were expected to learn essential skills and crafts which would make them…